"Coping with exponential change means using traditional spiritual tools ..."

If we're lucky ... after we have exhausted every other avenue ... we turn to the traditional tools of spirituality to cope with stress and rapid change. That is, with life on earth.

You won't hear a word like "spirituality" in many Fortune 500 board rooms, but businesses too are figuring it out.

It makes sense. These practices are the result of centuries of reflection on our collective experience, sifting and sorting everything we've tried in order to find out what really works.

Some things seem to work across the board.

Effective organizations have: (1) a high degree of mutuality; (2) mechanisms for frequent, widely distributed feedback; and (3) accountability to mutually-agreed-upon goals and to a vision of leadership.

Easy to say. Harder to do.

MUTUALITY:

The individualism that many of us were taught was axiomatic to being human was in fact generated by a print culture. Before the Gutenberg era, nobody thought that way.

Digital culture undermines individualism and our ability to act as if we exist apart from our communities.

A representative of a school district told me they received good grades from corporations that hired their graduates, except in one area: cooperative learning. I asked for a definition of "cooperative learning" and realized that in my day it was called "cheating."

This indicates how completely the assumptions of post-WW2 America have been turned upsidedown by the digital revolution.

Independent learning apart from the learning of the group or organization is not viable because the individual -- one of many modular units in the network -- MUST correlate with the activity and trajectory of the group.

This means learning new behaviors.

A CEO of a utility told me they used to spend 85% of their time on task and 15% on process issues -- leadership, team work, and the like. Today the percentages are reversed, not because utility executives want hugs on Monday morning but because that's what mandated by conditions.

As a young hacker said, looking back nostalgically on the days when he could know everything about hacking a system: "These days, there's too much for any one person to know. That's why the most important thing I need to know is what I don't need to know. The second most important thing is, who knows it? So I can get it when I need it."

He needs to know ... people-skills, networking, cooperative learning. The electronic network has back-engineered a culture that must work as the network does -- in order to be effective AND in order to function in a symbiotic relationship with the network.

FEEDBACK:

An organism in a rapidly changing environment must know what is happening inside itself (the smaller system) and outside. As we climb a spiral toward more and more complex organization, the feedback loops must grow larger, and those inside the boundaries of the smaller system must make us aware of internal changes in equilibrium. That's why quality programs insisted the system must include suppliers, customers, and ultimately all "stake-holders" -- to remain current with conditions and to capture the knowledge of everyone relevant to the success of the organization.

All the way up the spiral, every living organism is part of the system and ultimately the universe must factor in the input from every living creature. That's another way of saying what mystics have always said, that all life is interdependent and the energy and information that constitutes the visible interaction among all parts of a system are an image of a universe that is unified, self-conscious and evolving.

On a more mundane level, we can not adapt to changing conditions or "morph" unless our sensors are out there in the multiplicity of environments that impact our well-being.

And ... we must hold ourselves accountable for what we learn.

ACCOUNTABILITY:

When things are going well, accountability diminishes. Then when things don't go well, there's chaos.

Many financial managers are riding the crest of a remarkable bull market. They receive handsome fees to manage billions of dollars. Yet only 7% of professional fund managers beat the S&P index over the past year.

So long as benchmarks are not used to align performance with stated goals, those managers can continue to benefit from the rising tide that is lifting all boats. But when the turnaround comes, mutual funds by the hundreds will merge or collapse in a shake-out that imposes stricter accountability.

Without accountability, there is no way to look back and see how we have done and no way to look forward to see where we want to go.

The absence of any of these essential qualities skews an organization in predictable ways.

Mutuality and feedback without accountability result in team-work and data-exchange to no end. The system has no compass and no means of realigning itself when it gets off course.

Feedback and accountability without mutuality characterize a top-down system driven by goals. But the feedback becomes fragmented, undermining the security we need to function. An anxious and fearful system becomes rigid and isolated; feedback does not result in purposeful action.

Accountability and mutuality without feedback characterize a closed system that is blind. Cults work well for those inside them until they don't. When something new gets in -- an idea, a fact, an event -- it's a debilitating blow. The cult either commits suicide or is transformed into something else. (A business can be a cult, too.)

To surrender one's illusion of individual well-being in order to participate in a larger structure for the good of all (including oneself) is, paradoxically, an individual decision. It is a moment of insight into one's real nature and destiny that so threatens our illusions and habitual state of denial that it has been called "a nightmare in daylight." Once it happens, however, we can never again think of ourselves as we did before. When the paradigm changes, there is no going back.

This template is not a recipe. It simply identifies some of the marks of that perilous journey, undertaken with fear and trembling appropriate to the real risks and real rewards.